‘Moneyball” opens with a Mickey Mantle quote: “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing your whole life.”

Bret Michel

‘Moneyball” opens with a Mickey Mantle quote: “It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing your whole life.”

Most of us haven’t been playing Mantle’s game, and even though we’re in a sports town that lives and breathes “America’s pastime,” we’re about to experience two engrossing hours peeking behind the curtain of what makes baseball tick. Not the view from the field, but from the front office.

As dry as that might sound, it’s anything but.

Of course, it helps when you have a handsome superstar like Brad Pitt as the head of that office. He headlines as Billy Beane, a former player who washed out before becoming general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

This film, which takes place during the A’s 2002 season, took a long time reaching the screen. It wasn’t until Pitt signed on (he also produces) that the project found its anchor. He’s not typically thought of as an underdog, but here he is, which fits a film that champions the unheralded.

When the movie begins, the A’s are losing the playoffs to the New York Yankees; they’re about to lose Jason Giambi to them, as well. Also his way out: Johnny Damon, who was snatched up by the Red Sox. As Pitt’s Beane sees it, “Boston’s taking our kidneys, and New York’s taking our heart.”

Hamstrung by a paltry (by baseball’s standards) $39 million budget (vs. the Yankees’ $114 million), Beane can’t compete in a buyers market. But he might win through a different numbers game, one he’s introduced to by Peter Brand (Jonah Hill, “Get Him to the Greek”), a quiet 25-year-old wunderkind who works in the Cleveland Indians’ home office as a special assistant to GM Mark Shapiro (Reed Diamond).

While Beane can’t afford to buy any of the Indians’ talent (his overtures are almost laughed at in a meeting with Shapiro and his staff), he’s curious who this Yale-educated young man is, and why the portly lad who studied economics has the ear of Shapiro. Beane may not walk away with a new first-baseman, but he’s able to poach Brand, who turns out to be one of his best acquisitions.

If you look for Brand in Michael Lewis’s nonfiction book that Steven Zaillian (“Shindler’s List”) and Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network”) adapted for their screenplay, you won’t find him. He’s a composite, culled mostly from the older Paul DePodesta, who had been working with the real-life Beane for a few years at this point. But no matter, this is entertainment, not a documentary, and it’s a rollicking one.

“Your goal shouldn’t be to replace players, it should be to replace wins,” Brand tells Beane, while Beane’s stable of longtime scouts scoff at this untested upstart’s radical ideas.

As Grady (Ken Medlock), one of the A’s oldest, most-trusted scouts argues, “Baseball isn’t just numbers. It’s not science. You’re discounting 150 years of how things have been done,” demanding to know who this kid with no experience in baseball is.

“He’s Pete,” is Beane’s simple, confident answer, his lower lip jutting forward in the way that only Pitt’s can.

Brand’s grand plan is to use stats to find value in players that no one else can see, building a team of 25 undervalued players or, as he calls it, an “island of misfit toys.”

Another strong dissenter in this new “adapt or die” direction is the A’s porcine manager, Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman, looking more like Don Zimmer than the actual Howe), who reminds Beane that the team is coming off of a 114-win season.

One of the biggest misfits of the A’s new lineup is Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt, TV’s “Parks and Recreation”), a catcher just released from the Red Sox, and a man Beane and Brand want to put on first base, a decision most onlookers find insane. Beane’s confidence in this choice appears to strengthen during the moment when he sees that Hatteberg is father to a young daughter, a fact that resonates strongly with the general manager.

Beane’s daughter Casey (Kerris Dorsey, “Walk the Line”) is a core element in understanding the film’s version of Beane. She’s the backbone of his life, and the key to the biggest career decision of his life, one that positions him within sight of managing our very own Boston Red Sox.

Beane’s strengths don’t include motivational speaking (murdering chairs and framed photos seem to be more his speed). But, after one memorable pep talk he gives in a batting cage to his highest-paid new hire, David Justice (Stephen Bishop), Sorkin’s great gift for dialogue works its way into Beane’s arsenal.

As was evident in Sorkin’s Oscar-winning script for David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” the writer is able to take subjects that should be boring – say, litigation over the ownership rights of Facebook, or the front office dealings of a baseball team being re-built from the ground up based on very un-cinematic statistics – and makes them completely gripping due in no small part to his characters’ crackling patter. People may not talk like this in real life, but when heard from your seat in the theater, it sure is a pleasure to listen to.

Marking his return to directing six years after making “Capote,” Bennett Miller uses slow motion and sound fade-outs, techniques that even a showman like Fincher wouldn’t over-rely on at this stage in his career.

After only three films in 13 years, you sense Miller’s using these flourishes rather than trusting his terrific script. Granted, it all adds to moments that are certainly rousing (special mention should also go to Michael Danna for his subtly building music, and Wally Pfister for his cinematography). Ultimately though, this is a writers’ and actors’ movie – and though it’s a great team effort, is “Moneyball” destined to win that last game of the year come Oscar time? I wouldn’t bet on it. But then, this team – and their film – likely won’t be forgotten.